Seeing the Boy
 
I am buying bagels at the grocery, and when I reach to pull the handle of the frozen food showcase, he is there. Lying between the cinnamon raisin and the whole grain, his eyes staring up toward the waffles, the landscape of his little body marked with lilliputian rivers of blood. 
 
I knew he was waiting for me, somewhere. The last time was five months ago, in the ballpark, as I walked between the trees through the makeshift parking lot to see Eric's Little League game. Then, I fell beneath a white oak and held onto the trunk, breathing deeply and repeating to myself the words of orientation: I am in America, it is 1987, I am not crazy, I have had these feelings before, and they always pass.
 
This is a little harder to do in front of the frozen food display. Even with the freezer door open, I am sweating all over. There's a humming in my ears, then "Attention, shoppers!" blares from the store's speaker. I grab the handles of the cart. The voice from the speaker begins talking about hot French bread, and my breathing begins to steady itself.  
 
Afraid to look at the bagels, I shove my cart out of the aisle and go to the checkout line. Standing still is hard. I put my hand into my pocket and touch the pill. Sometimes just touching it is enough. Once home, I tell myself I cannot go to that place in my head, but I am already there:  
 
I am a nurse, just out of college, working dawn to dark in a temporary building that we call a hospital, in a place no one ever gave a thought about before. Just outside Hanoi, I apply bandages to men with no legs, no hands, no hope. My own future postponed, I am witness to the theft of futures of dozens of men my own age. 
 
I am like Scarlett O'Hara among the wounded in Atlanta: repulsed by what I see, but strong enough to keep looking at it.
 
I can use a rifle. I am quick on my feet. No one asks me to meet the helicopter carrying the serum; I volunteer. They are all afraid for the copter to come too close to the building—the random shooting has started again. Someone tossed a grenade and blew up the storage shed only last week. They do not want me to go, but it isn't far, and the doctors are needed where they are.
 
It is nearing dusk when I leave, trying not to make too much noise as I slosh through the inlets of the river. I know where I am going, and I move in a slightly crooked line in order to escape deep water, and trees where poison vines cling. My rifle is up. I move into the edge of a small clearing about a hundred yards from where the helicopter will land, and I see his eyes. He is small, about eight years old—Eric's age—and his hand, clutching something, is raised in the air. 
 
I shoot, and the boy falls instantly. I am Scarlett again, standing on the stairway. Now I've done murder. Child murder. 
 
Some mysterious automatic process takes me to the helicopter, where I pick up the serum and turn back, a part of me hoping a sniper will put me out of my misery. I arrive intact, and I tell about the boy. I had no other choice but to kill him. That is what the men tell me, but they never treat me the same again. I have permanently intruded into their territory—the murky psychological jungle where honor and duty and violence are twined together like the poison vines on the trees by the river.
 
It is 1987 and I am in America, safe in my home. But some day soon, at the grocery or in the mall—when  I have dropped my guard a little, when I am daring to act like a woman not possessed by indestructible demons—I will see a little boy, lying still and bloody on the ground, his hand clutching a rubber ball.